'22-year wait' to buy first home

Low to middle income earners will not see their disposable income approach pre-recession levels until 2020 at best, a report from think-tank the Resolution Foundation has warned.

PUBLISHED: 00:57, Mon, Jan 23, 2012

People on a low or middle income face a 22-year wait to buy their first home, a new study claims [PA]

Low to middle income earners will not see their disposable income approach pre-recession levels until 2020 at best, a report from think-tank the Resolution Foundation has warned.

The Squeezed Britain study said households in this bracket, which typically bring in just over £20,000 in take-home pay a year, are also facing a 22-year wait to save up enough cash to buy their first home.

The report exposed the "daily struggle" of these families, which account for 5.8 million households and nearly one third of working age homes in Britain. It suggested that incomes for this group will decline before flattening out around 2016-17.

If this is followed by strong growth, it will take until 2020 for low to middle income households to return to the levels of disposable income they had before the recession, but if growth is stagnant real incomes could be 8% lower than in 2007.

Under both scenarios, the gap between low and middle income earners and those on higher incomes will widen, the report warned.

The study also charted the "disappearing" property ladder for these households, who typically took four years to save for a first-time buyer deposit in 1991.

By 2001 this group took eight years to raise a deposit and by 2011 this wait had more than doubled to 22 years, with those aged under 35 facing being stuck in rented accommodation, perhaps forever.

Researchers put the sharp rise down to house price rises as well as bigger deposits as a percentage of house prices needing to be raised, while wages remain flat.

They based their calculations on a deposit of around 20% currently being needed to purchase a first-time buyer house, typically costing just over £124,500.

Low and middle income earners saving around 5% of their annual wages, amounting to just over £1,000 a year in savings before interest, would take 22 years to raise a deposit of just under £25,000.